small is safe

Tying it Up - The Need to Starve.

There is a twisted irony in the fact that whilst I have worked so damn hard to eliminate 'need' (a word not in my vocabulary, remember?) I have developed a need strong enough to kill me.

In my first post I wrote about the concept of needing, and how it causes such pain and such disgust in me, and I realise, in many others.
I later realised that without thinking, I had not acknowledged that not all needs inspire such a strong reaction in me, and I got to thinking that not all needs are equal.
In the last post then, I wrote about Maslow... about the fact that his hierarchical structure identifies and prioritises five different needs which, when met, culminate in self actualisation.
(Others have added an additional layer to the triangle, a top section which identifies the need, once self actualised, to trascend oneself, but I would argue that the notion of self actualisation somehow incorporates a degree of transcendance. That, or it completely nullifies the need to transcend.
It's not my intention to debate the neccessity of adding tiers to Maslow's work but it provides a (somewhat welcome) avoidance.

I have this thing where I start out trying to write something and I encounter such a magnetic resistance to it that my brain actually starts to disconnect (dissocation, I realise).


So.

Forcing the wires to connect...


At some point in the last two years, a tiny bomb went off inside me.

Looking back now, I think it had been in me for a long time and though Iknow I searched for it, the search was hampered by the fact that I couldn't always hear it ticking, and I didn't really know what it looked like, this thing I was blindly trying to locate.


In keeping with either the contained nature of the bomb itself, or the steely numbness of the container it was in, I didn't even really notice when it went off.

A controlled exposion perhaps.

It was only later that I realised something had changed. I still can't find a moment.


What had changed was my way of managing feelings. (Okay... okay... I learned that was what it was about in therapy).


I had, unwittingly I think, walked straight into the easily stretched jaws of an eating problem which may or may not be defined as Anorexia (and you can't hear me but I am wailing, "I'm too old to be Anorexic! I'm too old!")

My sister (who I intend to leave out of this post, honestly I do) was born right at the entrance of that gaping mouth. Now, God knows how many years later, I seem to have landed there.


Actually, as I type, I am aware that I have been tiptoeing up to that cavernous mouth for years on and off. I have run in and out like a child testing its bravery, testing whether mum and dad will still be there if they dare to go into the cave.

It was when I stopped smoking that I suddenly found myself inside.
Which is weird, isn't it?



So. This is my figuring. And I'm no expert.


I think that when I stopped smoking a big thing happened in me.


And this is where it somehow gets tied together but bear wth me because my brain is tryingto slide.

Years of depression wasted certain parts of my insides. Even killed a part of me (and for all the 'oh but I want to believe the world is ultimately a sunny place' people out there, that will be a line that they will want to jump on and slap dismissively as they shake their critical heads).

It is impossible to write about the depths of the depression, or to say just what it stole from me - again, a topic that my brain goes to great lengths to stop me articulating -

Part of the darkness was an inherent knowledge that I would die before I gave up smoking. I never, ever really believed that I had any willpower... I had repeatedly chanted to myself that I couldn't do it, that I was hopeless at self denial and that I was weak and needy.

Ashamed and disgusted by the inability to say "no" to myself, a spiral of need and denial, self harm and self hatred took over.


I stopped smoking in February 2008.

With that came the realisation that I could execise self discipline and that it was possible to have power over my self. To CONTROL.
I could control the shameful needs I had.
I could control everything if I could just teach myself not to need anything.
(Insert inner child theories in here. I can't).


So. If I can deny myself food I can teach myself not to need anything.

I will train myself to be grateful for the absolute minimum.

I will silence the need, whatever it is, by starving it.




This was a part of it.



I'm wondering whether I should slit this post in two.

It's very long.
But then, so is the history behind all this.

Oh for the gift of writing succinctly.


When I had spent a fair amount of time just tucked between the lip and the sharp teeth of this mouth, and I was reassured that the mouth wasn't moving/shutting etc, I moved further in.

What I didn't quite notice was that at some point, the mouth swallowed.


It's hard to describe the fear and desperation in here but it is perhaps true to say that those feelings exist in completely overwhelming proportions on the outside of this prison.

What It Takes

As with all things in the mental health realm, the DSM IV lists a number of must-haves in order to be a Real Live Anorexic.

If you have been reading here with any regularity (or any memory), you may recall that my sister, who has spent roughly half her life being defeated in her attempts to starve herself to death, was possibly the case on which the DSM criteria is actually BASED.

Okay. Maybe not.
(But she could very well be)

For anyone interested, the DSM states that Anorexia Nervosa is defined by the following four factors:

• Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height: Weight loss leading to maintenance of body weight (85%)

• Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though under weight.

• Disturbance in the way one's body weight or shape are experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.

• Amenorrhea (at least three consecutive cycles) in postmenarchal girls and women. Amenorrhea is defined as periods occurring only following hormone (e.g., estrogen) administration.

Obviously, seventeen years of bearing witness to the horrors of this illness have taught me that in actual fact, the above prerequisites to the label of 'Anorexia Nervosa' are only the very tip of the iceberg.
I could name many more factors.
But that is, perhaps, for another post.

You could be forgiven for thinking that, given the fact I have lost my sister to the horrifying effects of this illness... given that I have raged at it, pleaded with it, cried to it and knelt moaning before its merciless, monstrous darkness... I would be the least likely person in the world to be drawn into its world.
You'd think I would be incapable of drawing others under the agony that wrapped itself around our family.

You'd think.
I thought that too.
Until something, at some point, changed.

Today I am 6 stone 5.

I'm not a proper anorexic... (which is what I wanted to write about when I began this post).

I'm very, very confused because I don't 'fit' in with the notion I had of Anorexia.
I thought that Anorexia had to come easily to those with it.
I thought that I was a 'fake' because I crave chocolate and all I really want to do is eat lovely food.
I think I'm crazy because I hate working out, but i have to, but I hate it, but I have to.... and my HUGE fear is that one day, I won't have the willpower to drive myself to run for miles, climb hundreds of floors, cycle like a maniac, cross train at high intensity, row hard and fast, use the resistance machines, do my floor exercises until I can't move.

Anorexia, if it is anything like this, isn't about suddenly hating food. It's about a spiral of absolute dread that you will lose control of it, even as it controls you.

Words Outside My Vocabulary - Need #2

Maslow is kind of the King of Needs and so it seems only right that he should get a mention.

In the interests of keeping this post fairly brief, I'm going to assume that anyone reading is already familiar with his concept of a hierarchy of needs possessed by each human being, and if not, then there are a million websites given to explaining this diagram.

As a teacher, we have this framework drilled into us fairly early on in our training.
(And yes, I know, it seems unbelievable that I am capable of being both the illogical mess you hear in this place, and the reliable, "together", professional, who somehow manages to gain the respect of pretty tough *problem* teenagers).

Anyway, I have always considered it to be a fairly accurate representation of our needs, but that's not my issue.

The real reason that I refer to Maslow here is that when I was writing my last post, I realised that I was generalising to a considerable extent when I wrote that I am repulsed by the notion of 'having needs'.

In fact, I don't mind admitting to some of the physiological needs on the bottom 'rung'.

Even the second arena doesn't pose too much of a threat to me.

It's the Love / Belonging part that presents problems.

I don't want to NEED any of the things in that part. In fact, "I don't want" is far too passive a way of putting it.

Ideally I would destroy anything in me that pertains to the NEED of those things.

I don't mind having them. I certainly don't mind giving them. But NEEDING them?

That I can't take.



And...

... intimacy?


Another word outside my vocabulary.

There seem to be quite a few, given that English is supposed to be my specialism.

Words Outside My Vocabulary - Need

Need
1. A condition or situation in which something
is required or wanted: crops in need of water; a need for affection.
2.
Something required or wanted; a requisite:
3. Necessity; obligation: There is no need for
you to go.
4. A condition of poverty or misfortune: The family is in dire
need.
v. need·ed, need·ing, needs

Such a small word and yet I can barely bring myself to use it for the weight that it carries.

Since being in therapy, I have realised that I have an almost pathological fear of 'need'.
It's not something I can even bring myself to talk to The Woman about. (Note: dispassionate terminology for 'my therapist'... I have occasionally been tempted to refer to her as She Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken thus likening her in some way to Voldemort (anyone who has read Harry Potter will understand) but that feels a little harsh, even by my standards.

The word "need' is guaranteed to make me want to run a thousand miles. Not because of a desperate desire for weight loss (though there is that) and not because I am passionate about long distance running, but because the concept of need terrifies me beyond all reason.

I've started this post about eight times over the past few months and I've never made it past the third line.
Now I have, my head is a swamp and I know I can't possibly negotiate my way through in one go.
Bear with me. I have problems sticking with these things.

So... Casting my mind into the lifeless swamp of depression that nearly killed me about ten years ago, I have an image of me curled on my bed, hands over my ears chanting, "I won't need anybody or anything. Nothing can touch me".
A strange thing to say admittedly, but at the time, my eyes were unused to having to see in a darkness as black as this one and I had yet to master the art of decompression as I plummeted into depths I had never visited.
Somewhere in this distress, a determination never to need was consolidated.

I learned to hate need, and I learned that if I couldn't completely destroy it, then the most important thing I could do was to pretend that it wasn't there at all.

Need became shameful.
It became something I despised.
It became a cause for utter hopelessness.

A few months into therapy, I became quite desperately worried that therapy was breeding a need in me.
I was terrified of her. Terrified that I was losing control. Terrified that kindness was blunting my spikes. Spikes which were protecting me from needing anyone.

I recall one session a few months ago where The Woman suggested that I might miss therapy / her during a break.
I told her that I wouldn't ever need her, and the minute that I started to, I'd run a mile.

Today she mentioned her upcoming holiday.
And I wondered if it was time to leave or if it's all just in my head.

I don't want to need anyone or anything.
The idea simultaneously repulses, terrifies and enrages me.

There is so so so much more to this, but as I pointed out, I really will be swamped by the swamp if I wade too far out all in one go.

Comfort

Licorice Comfits

My favourite teacher

asked little me

what a carpenter did.

Standing at her desk

Her warmth gathered me,

thoughtful and careful.

"Makes carpets".

Her laughter fizzed

bubbles of love and pride

She opened her special tin

a rainbow of hidden treasure.

For years I thought

they were called Licorice Comforts.

Hiding Self Harm.

*****Content may be triggering******

I tried not to wince as I hauled my body onto the couch last Monday.

I had spent the day explaining to concerned colleagues that I had pulled a muscle at the gym.

In fact, I cut so badly that one of the wounds wouldn't stay sealed. Each time I showered, the steristrips peeled off and the cut was left gaping again.

When she asked where I had cut, I put my hand against it.

"The groin", she said, nodding knowingly.

(It might just be me, but therapists seem to have an extraordinarily irritating habit of nodding and 'yes'ing when you reveal something.
To my mind, this seems to be a smokescreen which hides the fact that the therapist is buying some figuring time, whilst simultaneously convincing the client that they are, in fact, omnipotent and had known the thing they had just revealed well before they said anything).

I digress.

Later in the session she announced that she was concerned I was cutting so close to a major artery.

Something in me froze.

My knowledge of anatomy not being as it could be, I had completely neglected to recall the fact that the area I cut is home to the femoral artery.

I'd only have about 3 minutes.
It's a horrible place to cut.

It only occurred to me after I left that her twisted therapists' mind probably decided that the fact that I cut there is because I have some sort of repressed sexual aggression towards my mother... or some such rubbish.

In fact, the reason I chose to cut near the groin is purely practical.
It will not be seen.
Even a (not too skimpy) bikini might hide the worst of the scarring.

Personally, I'd much rather use my feet (as I used to) or my arms.
But they are both so visible and I would probably rather die than have someone who knows me find out about self harm.
I couldn't ever go to hospital because I'd never cope with the horrible shame of someone seeing.

It has then, come as rather a shock to realise just how close I was when I cut the other night. And how close I must have been so many times before.

I looked up diagrams of the femoral artery in order to see where it is and it is hard to find something which specifically shows it in relation to the rest of the body. Suffice to say that I must have had some lucky escapes.

Ridiculously and somewhat inexplicably, I'm on a cutting spree at the moment.
It is desperate and painful and calming.

I am having to monitor the depth carefully and that is a real battle when a part of me wants to get right to the core of me.

A week later, the wound I refer to is, strikingly, a mouth.
No longer bleeding, but not properly sealed, it keeps emitting pus, despite my half hearted efforts to disinfect.
The pain from the cut is deep; which leaves me confused as to why I would find it necessary to cut again two days later, albeit far more times and far less deeply.

I suspect that even the most understanding of people might struggle to understand how on earth a person could inflict damage upon themselves in such a way.

The concept feels lip curlingly revolting to me... and I DO this!

I can well understand those who find it nauseating to imagine. I can understand the disgust and anger others may feel.

I myself have a part of me which identifies very strongly with those who may view the deliberate damage and mutilation of areas of the body as a terrible act of selfishness and hopeless self indulgence.

Ultimately, self harm is a silent, violent scream.

It is a way of putting something desperate on the outside.

It is a way of crying without heaving and sobbing and worrying about your eyes being red.

It's a way of safely taking the top layer off the toppling tower.

Difficulty and Disgust

Even a master of understatement would struggle to say that therapy had been anything less than "extremely difficult" this week.

Difficult.

Difficult to find words to write about it.
Difficult to find anything concrete to hang the words on.
Difficult to be in my body right now.
Difficult to feel anything other than utter disgust for myself.

On Friday night I sat in her room and tried my best to stay still as my insides curled and contorted and twisted at the touch of her words.

It's hard to remember what she said.
My despair was so great and she pounded on with her search for meaning... the whys. The effing whys.
My only why is often, 'why does it matter?'
Why does it matter why my parents transfer things onto me?
Why does it matter if Dad's doing this or that ?
Why does it matter if .........

At times, her questions and her wondering lead me to a place where I no longer exist. Where nothing matters and I doubt that anything I have ever felt is real.

On Friday, she told me I had been silently furious in the previous session.
I think she may have been right but I can't recall feeling anything at all.
She had 'threatened' to call my doctor.
I told her she wouldn't see me for dust if she ever did that.
And I mean it.

I was angry on Friday too.
She didn't understand how hard it is for a single person (who doesn't even know whether or not "the future" is a possibility) to buy a house and live with the pressure of being solely responsible for mortgage repayments.
To be fair, she did admit that she hadn't really thought about how hard it might be.

I felt she was disgusted by me.
I heard her mind screaming at me underneath her carefully restrained words.

"Pathetic.
Weak.
Pull yourself together.
Stop being so lame.
Don't be such a wuss.
For fucks sake, get over it.
You are wasting my time.
Grow up.
I want to slap you.
You disgust me.
You're revolting.
You pathetic little victim.
Stop your whining.
I can't deal with your ridiculous feelings.
You are irrational and absurd.
Stop being so complicated.
Don' be so negative.
I could wring your neck.
You need a good smack."

That's what I heard.

I asked her if she was disgusted.

No. She SAID.
Quite categorically.
No.
(But then she would wouldn't she)
Instead she reeled off some disgusting, pity laden bull about how I was wretched and suffering. She took advantage of my choked inability to argue to tell me that no matter how much I didn't want to know it, my parents had not "cloaked me" enough (go figure).
And I cried out of the sheer anger at her, the utter exhaustion and pointlessness of it all.

So what?

So what if this happened, or that didn't happen? So what?
It still leaves me where I am now.
I need to change that.
Not look at why or how or when.

My middle sister is in hospital again and my youngest sister doesn't want to be anywhere near me because she can't bear to see me losing weight.

I feel like I have somehow lost everyone.

My skin screams that it is almost unbearable.

Emetophobia (Part 1)

Partly because I am so deeply ashamed of the sheer range of issues I have, and partly because I am so frightened of it that I find it hard to go near the subject, emetophobia is something I haven't particularly mentioned here before.
Or anywhere else for that matter.

I am aware as I type, that some of those who read what follows may have never heard of such a thing as emetophobia before. A few of those people may gain some insight into this fear and the impact it has on those who suffer with it.
Others will be completely unable to comprehend why some live their lives in fear and trembling of something which seems to be a relatively minor (and short lived) discomfort.
However, there may also be some people reading who know this fear only too well. People who have to carry the weight of uncertainty and fear day in, day out.
These unfortunate people are known as "emetophobes"; though, to use the term, 'known as' is somewhat ironic given that, due to the unprecedented sense of shame that surrounds this particular phobia, others are rarely aware of it.

So.
What is it?

This is where it gets difficult because the strength of my phobia makes it hard to use the vocabulary associated with its definition.
For the purposes of this post however, I'll go against my instincts and attempt to use the 'words' (which often feel dangerous or overwhelmingly repulsive to an emetophobe) to define the phobia.

Emetophobia is the intense and irrational fear of v*miting.
(I thought I could face the words, but even spoiling them is difficult at the moment.)
Emetophobes may themselves be terrified of the act of v****ing, may be terrified of others doing so, or it may be that, like me, they have an equal fear of both.

Although it is relatively unheard of, emetophobia is actually thought to be between the fifth and seventh most common fear in the UK so if you are suffering from this, you may at least take a tiny bit of comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone.
Emetophobia affects people differently but can be so severe that it will render the emetophobe incapable of managing to leave the house, maintain employment, attend any function where alcohol may be present, be in crowded places or have children /fall pregnant.

In my own case I have learned that at times when a bug is going around, it may appear that I am both agoraphobic or anorexic, but whilst partaking in the behaviours of these conditions, they are symptomatic of the real problem, which is the emetophobia.
As I have already pointed out, the fact that it is so deeply repulsive and shameful to the sufferer, often means that most phobics are unaware of just how many others share their fear and can often lead to intense feelings of isolation and loneliness in the pain and terror.

Trust me. I speak from experience.

I can't recall the time when it dawned on me that my panic attacks were mainly caused by the fear of myself or others being physically ill.
What I do remember very, very clearly, is the moment when, walking over the bridge to the house where I was living in Greenwich about four years ago, my old house mate and best friend for 15 years phoned and told me that there seemed to be a name for what I had.
Now; I'm not big into labels and names and all that stuff... but I looked it up and I will never, ever forget the absolute relief I experienced as I read through the emetophobic websites I found.
Don't get me wrong
Since that time, I have hardly been near any of those sites.

It puzzles me that anyone with emetophobia would want to be in a community where the main topic of conversation is the very thing that they are most plagued by and terrified of.

A lot of the time, I can hardly read the words without feeling nauseous .

I also find it puzzling that people who are suffering with this condition (and yes, I do believe "suffering" is the correct term in this instance) would want to turn to others who are in exactly the same situation as themselves! As if someone else who is drowning could be saved or rescued by another person who is drowning.

I find it anything but comforting to be told it's all going to be okay by someone who feels exactly the same terror as myself.

However, we are all different and some people no doubt, find it immensely comforting to know that they are part of something like this.

To be honest, it is such a desperate phobia, if something seems to help, it should be clung to as if it were a life raft.

Emetophobia, or 'emet' as it is often known amongst sufferers, is one of the most difficult phobias to work with clinically.

Although CBT is widely recognised to be the most effective treatment, emetophobia is thought to be one of the most difficult to shift.

Exposure therapy is also thought to have had some success, although I have read that any relief from this therapy is temporary.

Hypnotherapy... Well... Don't start me on that one. That is for another post. Suffice to say, if you are reading this and considering hypnotherapy for emetohobia... be very aware that despite the claims made by experienced hypnotherapists, it is often a very expensive waste of time.

So.

Where does all this leave me?

I'm in therapy. Psychoanalytic.

Does this work for emetophobia?

Apparently not.

But then, nor does anything else.

I've said enough on this topic for one post.

It's absolute hell at the moment and I am terrified of breathing, but I will try to explain from a more personal perspective in another post.

Therapy

If you like to read careful, well thought out, balanced thoughts, penned by the dim glow of understanding and hindsight which therapy allegedly affords us, please look away now.
In fact, look away anyway.

My therapy session...

I don't even think I can find words.
I haven't been able to think about any words she said.

She spoke about "mentalising".
(Don't ask me, never heard of it)

Apparently, according to her with the giant therapeutic crystal ball, my parents were unable to do this with my / our feelings.

So nobody heard them and nobody bore them.

Woe is me, I cry in mock distress.

What does she want me to do?
Throw a pity party for myself? The much loved, much encouraged, much adored eldest child who, by comparison to most of the population on earth, barely knows what it IS to suffer?
Does she want me to be upset because my parents, in their love and their desperation to bring us u to be moral and responsible members of society, deemed it okay to smack us sometimes?
Does she want me, in my comfortable Western world lifestyle, to weep and wail because things didn't work out quite the way they would have done in an ideal world?

I disgust myself and today, she disgusted me too.

I walked in today and she just pointed a gun at me and fired repeatedly until I told her that I couldn't take it anymore and I wanted to leave.

She stopped firing but somewhere, something had curled u during the shoot, hands over ears, feet drawn in tightly.
I don't even know what I felt, or if I felt at all.

I'm a mass of contradictions, she says.
I nod.
I'm caught in absolute extremes, she says.
I nod.
My parts are totally opposite extremes, she says.
Haven't you already said that? I nod.

It's because nobody could hear the feelings.
I stop nodding.
Nobody could bear them or make them manageable.

I don't believe this.

Okay, look at the evidence.
So I do.
And yes, it seems to be there, but I CAN'T reconcile it. Not with what I know about how loved we are.
I can't.

I'm not even touching the throbbing pain I have in my chest.
It sickens me as it pulses.
I breathe through my nose as nausea beats in waves, my mouth shut tightly.

Today her kindness made me want to snap myself into small, sharp pieces.
I hate her for it.
I don't want it. It will make me ill.
She will take it away and I will be left, a small, curled skeleton in the back of an hollow shell.

Coastal Wanderings

I have friends in Cornwall and, in need of a change of scene, I packed my little car and headed South in search of wintery sun, salt winds and the turquoise ocean.

I certainly wasn't disappointed by any of those.

Over the four days, I followed craggy cliff paths for miles along the coast.

I love the stinging freshness of the sea air, knotting my hair into sticky tangles as the on shore winds catch you from the side.
I love the flat, wind-skinned grasses and I breathe the salt fish air as it cuts across my face.

Far below golden, sun baked cliff faces, the black rocks gleam like angular seals and I am in love with this place. This moment. This air.

I loved picking my way through the lonely, heathered landscape; Watching swelling, white clouds roll across the blue, to become as one white sea over the horizon.

Beauty.

Humbling majesty.

And somewhere within, a wave builds and I surf it as it folds and crashes and races my heart

There is a bible quote that I always think of at times like these. I have no idea whether it is appropriate to use in this context, but for me, in the midst of the breathless wonder of such untamed, natural beauty, it is as though, "deep calls to deep".

Countless times I have been struck by the indescribable sense that some deep, unknown part of me is responding to a depth of purity in creation that is beyond the grasp of human intellect. Deep calling to deep.

At the risk of sounding as though I am spouting hippy crap, I wish to point out that I am not big into tree hugging.

No. What I am trying to describe is something spiritual. It's almost as if, a tiny piece of earth breathes in at exactly the same time as heaven, and for one fraction of a moment, the two merge and hover together, as one.




I could go on to write about the rest of my holiday, and how I came back early because I could no longer cope with the fear and lack of control over food.

I could write about the terror each time that night fell and the emetophobia sentenced me to moments of extreme panic.

But... I won't because I am afraid.

I'm so angry that I ruin every good thing that I have.

Eye Of The Storm

Still,

in the corner

I curl

tight,

small,

unmoving

as the storm

whirs

and whips

my untucked feet.

My deaf ears,

closed to the winds.

My fists

clenched to fight

you who come close.

Still,

in the corner,

I curl

small

and

smaller

and

smaller

still.

Sitting Tight

Sometimes I have to stay very still and keep away from reflection... From my reflection, I guess.

It's been like that lately.

Even in therapy I have stayed as far away as I can.

I call it, "staying on my outside".

It can be a strange place to be because, once I'm there, I find it very hard to believe in any of the things I struggle with. I even believe that I am lying and that nothing inside really exists.

At the moment, I am not sure.

What I have been struggling with a lot is the selfishness I see in myself.

I feel as though therapy, with its emphasis on me, has caused an increasing preoccupation with SELF.

I have reached new levels of self disgust lately.

Again, SELF.

Hence I have been staying on my outside.

On the outside I function very well because it is all about the needs of others.

I haven't been here at all lately and so haven't read anything. I'm trying to catch up on lots of blogs posts I have missed.

Bear with me...

And Gail...

yes.

Isn't It Ironic.

Eyes fixed, head down, her rage and bitterness fueled a pace close to a run as she walked away from my desperate calls in town today. My eyes burned as I watched the dark dufflecoat hanging off a painfully thin frame, grow smaller and smaller.

She is angry with the unfairness of it all (as she sees it).

Much of my life (over half) has been spent embroiled in her destruction.
Forced to watch her desperate attempts to starve herself to death.
Forced to listen to the cries of my family, as they witness her withering body, her protruding bones,
angular agony.
Forced to look into the inward turning eyes of a father, driven to weep, hollow, heavy sobs,
my eyes swim, and I shake.
Forced to watch the hand wringing desperation of a mother
a face broken, the smash of rejection clattering within,
and I writhe at night, tearing at my sheets
Forced to watch a beautiful little sister, rock on her bed
silent tears flooding the channels of her bitten lips,
and I, a pinball.

Forced to watch a sister
starve to death
I wanted to put
DNR on her bed
I wanted to hold her
until she was safe
I wanted to beat her
until she couldn't hurt us anymore
I wanted to make her suffer
as she had made us
I wanted to take her pain
and live it instead
I wanted to love her
I wanted to kill her
I wanted to protect her
I wanted to hear her
I wanted to be loved by her.

Now?

Nothing.

I believe that, at some point (and I know the point was somewhere during my second or third severe bout of clinical depression) a part of me died.
I no longer feel specifics.

Today she told me I was anorexic.
She told me I had a problem.
She told me it wasn't fair that I could lose weight while she had to go to hospital for five days a week and be forced to eat.

And I stood against the freezing cold in the city centre, trying to draw myself in, as I watched her disappear, willing her to look back, just once.
And I looked at the people circling my axis, and wondered if they would feel the black residue if they walked through the point where all the words had spilt; I wondered if an air space could hold a decade's pain for just a moment.

The agony of the irony is somewhere, and it is too much to bear. Too much to allow. Too much to deal with any other way than to put it on my skin and watch as it runs out.

Balance? What's that?

I have binged.


It could have been worse I guess... I could have eaten forever.

I COULD have eaten hundreds and hundreds of chocolates.

I hae put on a pound and because of that, tonight I have felt as though it's all pointless.

It's all or nothing with me.

Black and white.

On or off.

Solid ground or thin air.



I hate this feeling. The sensation of being too big for my body; the feelings of loss... and paradoxically, of gain.



I haven't written lately. Partly because I have just been too busy, and partly because, although there has barely been a day when I haven't wanted to put something down, I have felt unable to give sound to the internal metal clashing of swords drawn to kill.

Unable to give sound to the clenching and wailing and writhing of the child trapped in my rib-boned cell.

Unable to give sound to the throat choking tears, which flow rapidly down hidden cheeks, brushed away with the backs of hasty, humiliated hands.


My therapist recogises the fact that I can't take much in... I can't allow much to touch me.

I'm just learning this.

When I find words, I'll try to work it out a little more.